Liberals have attacked President Bush’s proposed tax reduction
package as a risky scheme and a massive, budget-busting giveaway to the
rich. Tax cut proponents have countered that by various historical
measures Bush’s tax cut is hardly excessive, and have argued it
provides a greater percentage tax reduction to lower- and middle-income
households than it does to wealthier families.

So which set of opinions has held sway on the three evening newscasts
since Bush’s inauguration? To find out, the Media Research Center’s
Free Market Project (FMP) analyzed ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS
Evening News, and NBC Nightly News during the first ten weeks
of the Bush administration, from January 20 through March 31, 2001.
During this period, the network evening broadcasts produced more stories
about the President’s tax cut proposals than any other Bush
administration initiative.

In all, our study identified and examined 93 broadcast network news
stories during this ten week period. Combined, the ABC, CBS and NBC
evening newscasts aired 55 full reports about Bush’s tax policies,
plus another 19 anchor-read briefs, for a total of 74 stories. An
additional 19 field reports which were not mainly focused on taxes, but
which contained substantial discussion of tax policy, were also included
in the study.

Sizing Up the Tax Cut: Reporters Side With Liberal Critics

In their review of these stories, FMP researchers tallied 94 judgments
about the size of the Bush tax cut, 84 percent of which labeled it as
"big" or "huge" or otherwise portrayed it as large.
Many of these (46) were the reported comments of tax cut opponents. North
Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, for example, was shown on ABC on February 5
declaring that "this tax cut is simply too big," while CBS on
February 27 displayed former Clinton budget chief Jack Lew claiming of
Bush’s plan, "there’s a real risk that it doesn’t all fit. And
if it doesn’t all fit, you’re either going to be spending more than
you mean to or not doing things that are very important."

These remarks from partisan sources were an expected part of the debate
surrounding the tax program, and they demonstrate the fact that judgments
about the size of the overall package were not neutral observations.
Liberal sources cited the bigness of Bush’s tax package as a key reason
for their opposition, claiming that a too-severe reduction in revenues
could either force a resumption of budget deficits or unwanted cuts in
federal programs.

Although
not nearly as frequently as they quoted tax cut critics, the networks also
quoted sources refuting this argument, including statements from President
Bush emphasizing his belief that the tax cut was the right size, and some
congressional Republicans who argued that the size of the tax cut should
be increased. Yet taken together, these views only amounted to 16 percent
of the total opinions on the size of the tax package, meaning that these
voices were outweighed five-to-one by those who criticized the largeness
of the tax cut. (See Exhibit 1: "Labeling Bush’s Tax Cut")

But reporters were guilty of more than simply failing to maintain a
balance in their choice of news sources, since about one-third of the
judgments about the scale of Bush’s tax cut (30 statements, or 32% of
the total) were expressed by network correspondents as their own opinion,
and all of these comments by reporters reflected the liberal perspective
that the proposed tax cut was large.

Most of these assessments from reporters came on CBS and NBC, each with
14 such comments. Correspondents on ABC’s World News Tonight were
far more neutral, casting the Bush tax cut as large only twice. (See
Exhibit 2: "Assertions By Reporters That Bush’s Tax Cut Is
Large")

CBS’s
Dan Rather uttered this opinion more than any other correspondent,
branding the President’s tax plan as "big" eleven times.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw used more varied language to convey his views about the
size of Bush’s program, calling it either "big," "very
big," or "massive" a combined total of ten times. These two
anchors together accounted for nearly two-thirds (64%) of the reporters’
commentary on this topic, and more than one-fifth (22%) of all of the
opinions on this topic from all sources

Contrary Information Omitted

When reporters validate one side’s partisan claims by embracing them
as their own, they signal audiences that those partisan claims are
essentially correct. In the case of the Bush tax cuts, there was ample
evidence that the overall magnitude of these tax proposals was
comparatively small, yet the networks persisted in repeating the claim of
liberal partisans that the cuts were large.

Reporters frequently stated that the overall size of the tax package
was $1.6 trillion, but usually omitted that this was the accumulated total
over a ten-year period. NBC’s weekend anchor John Seigenthaler, on
February 4, was the only correspondent during this time period to clearly
state this point in his presentation of "the President’s plan to
cut taxes by $1.6 trillion over ten years." This more complete
description of the tax cut’s size makes it seem far less formidable.
Under current law, federal revenues are expected to total about $28
trillion during this same ten-year period, meaning that the total tax
reduction package amounts to less than six percent of the total
anticipated revenue.

Further, all of the network coverage has relied on statistics derived
from "static analysis" of the budgetary consequences of the
President’s program. A "static analysis" does not take into
account the fact that consumers, investors, workers and businesses will
respond to lower tax rates by changing their behavior in ways that will
lead to more economic growth. These changes in economic behavior are
widely understood and expected — one reason why tax cuts are generally
recommended when the economy is weak.

According to a detailed research paper recently distributed by the Heritage
Foundation to more than a thousand members of the media — including
those at ABC, CBS and NBC — a "dynamic analysis" of the Bush
tax cut that considered these changes in economic behavior indicated that
"because the tax relief would increase economic growth and
employment, the larger tax base would generate $846 billion in tax revenue
that is unaccounted for in a static analysis," slicing the estimated
"cost" of the tax cuts by 47 percent.

Additionally,
a study by the National
Taxpayers Union (NTU) compared the Bush tax cut with two previous
across-the-board income tax rate cuts: the Kennedy tax cut of 1963 and the
Reagan tax cut of 1981. According to the NTU, Bush’s proposed cut is
actually smaller than both previous cuts "as an average percentage of
Gross Domestic Product (our nation’s yearly economic output) — a
measure many economists believe is the most relevant factor regarding a
tax cut." Reagan’s cut amounted to 3.3 percent of the overall
economy, followed by Kennedy’s at 2.0 percent. Bush’s proposed cut —
castigated by so many network reporters as "big" and
"massive" — amounts to only 1.1 percent of the GDP. (See
Exhibit 3: "Comparing Tax Cuts")

None of the networks even hinted at the Heritage and NTU studies, nor
was there any evidence that they altered their commentary about the tax
cut’s size after being presented with these contrary facts. The Heritage
paper was specifically prepared to offer a factual rebuttal to the Concord
Coalition, whose claims that the Bush tax cut was dangerously large were
publicized on ABC’s World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly
News. Yet none of the networks told viewers about either of these
studies; doing so would have enabled audiences to think more critically
about reporters’ labeling of the tax package as "big" and
"huge."

Who Benefits? Liberal Arguments Presented
With Little Context

The other key complaint voiced by
liberal critics about the Bush tax cut is its alleged unfairness — i.e.,
the tax cuts are merely a giveaway to the rich that offer little or
nothing to lower- and middle-income households. This perspective was
repeated on the networks 31 times, mainly by Democrats lobbying against
the tax cut proposal or reporters summarizing the liberal complaint. For
example, CBS’s Rather introduced a story on February 8 by informing
viewers that "Democrats said again the Bush cuts are mostly a boon to
the rich, and they say the cuts risk squandering the nation’s budget
surplus."

That
same evening, ABC quoted the President making the opposite point, telling
Hispanic business leaders, "My plan dramatically reduces the marginal
rate on many low-income workers." But this counter-argument — that
Bush’s plan offered tax relief to all income taxpayers, or that his
program actually provided a larger percentage cut in the tax bills of
lower- and middle-income taxpayers — was relayed to viewers less than
half as frequently (15 times) as the liberal assertion that the tax cuts
were "a boon to the rich." (See Exhibit 4: "Debating the
Fairness Issue")

Liberals pushed their argument by stressing the raw dollar savings for
families at different income levels. Nine times, the evening news
presented Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle making this liberal point.
At one photo-op (shown on all three broadcasts), he asserted that "if
you make over $300,000 a year, this tax cut means you get to buy a new
Lexus. If you make $50,000 a year, you get to buy a muffler on your used
car." Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett was displayed on NBC on
March 8, asserting that under the Bush plan, "you can use your big
tax savings to buy a can of beans daily."

Fairness would mean reporters would have balanced liberals’ favored
citation of raw dollar totals with information on the percentage tax
reduction for various households, as conservatives favored. Yet the
networks rarely did this. The only exceptions: NBC on three occasions, and
ABC once, summarized data showing the percentage reduction in the tax
burden facing families with different incomes. These data made it clear
that the rich would not receive the largest percentage tax cuts.

One of those exceptions: ABC’s Terry Moran offered both sets of
numbers on February 8, explaining that "under the Bush proposal, a
single person making $20,000 a year would get a $300 tax cut. That’s 16
percent less than the person pays in taxes now. A married, working couple
with two children who make $60,000 a year would get a $1,600 cut, which
represents a 40 percent reduction from current law. And, a married couple
with two children making $1,000,000 a year would get a $46,000 tax break,
a 15 percent cut." Not only does this show that the rich weren’t
getting the greatest percentage tax cut; working backwards, those figures
also indicate that the higher-income couple is currently paying more than
$300,000 each year in federal income taxes. As a tax expert told Moran,
"Poor people do not get the same big tax cuts that high-income people
get under this plan. That’s because they don’t pay large amounts of
tax."

Exhibit
5, "Most Taxes Paid By Top Earners," makes this point even more
clearly. According to data provided by the Internal Revenue Service and
the Tax Foundation, and published in Investor’s Business Daily on
February 8, under current law, the top five percent of income earners
shoulder more than 50 percent of the federal income tax burden, while the
bottom 50 percent of income earners pay only about four percent of federal
income taxes. The top one percent of earners — those singled out in so
much liberal rhetoric — account for more than one-third (34.8%) of the
government’s income tax revenue.

In other words, many millions of Americans are already essentially
excluded from the burdens of an income tax, so any changes in tax rates
cannot be expected to have a great effect on their tax bills. Conversely,
the wealthiest citizens account for such a large portion of the federal
tax pie, it is difficult to reduce income tax rates without substantially
reducing the tax bills of wealthy citizens.

The even-handed approach that Moran displayed on February 8 was
discarded a month later by his colleague, ABC congressional reporter Linda
Douglass, who on March 8 read a description of the benefits of the
across-the-board income tax cut that could have been written by
Daschle’s press secretary. "People making $56,400 would get back
$511 a year," she told viewers. "Those making $1,000,000 would
get back more than $28,000." She never hinted at the fact that the
lower-income household in her example was obtaining a larger percentage
cut than the high-income family, or that the high-income family was
responsible for far larger payments to the government.

To their credit, three stories on NBC offered viewers this
counter-argument. "What about the charge that the plan mostly
benefits the rich? Not so, say some experts," reporter David Gregory
explained on February 5. "As a percentage of their tax liability, the
rich actually get a smaller cut than many others." This point was not
made frequently enough on either ABC or NBC to come close to balancing the
31 claims of liberal partisans who were repeatedly shown stressing the
supposed unfairness of the tax cut, but both networks deserve at least
some credit for offering viewers a rare glimpse of the other side of the
story.

CBS Excluded Data Rebutting Liberal
Critics

While ABC and NBC downplayed
alternative data that countered the liberal argument that the tax cuts
were unfair, the CBS Evening News refused to report this
information even a single time. Instead, on three occasions CBS reporters
chose to make precisely the same point as Democratic partisans,
emphasizing that the net tax reduction of the wealthiest citizens would
have the highest raw dollar value.

On
January 25, using an on-screen graphic to help reinforce the point,
CBS’s John Roberts organized the numbers in a way that would please
liberals: "Under the Bush plan, a family of four making $30,000 would
save about $700; $50,000, $1,900; and at $140,000, the tax break is more
than $5,000....The tax cut was roundly criticized during the election
campaign for catering to the rich. One analysis calculated the average
giveback for the top one percent of earners at $46,000, while another
found a single mother of two with an income of $22,000 would get nothing
back."

The on-screen graphic explained that the "one analysis" cited
authoritatively by Roberts was in fact a study by a group called Citizens
for Tax Justice, which Roberts failed to tell viewers was a liberal
interest group. Roberts made a similar presentation on February 8 ("a
married couple with no children making $950,000 a year would get back
almost $9,000 in the first year, more than $43,000 in the fifth"),
while Capitol Hill correspondent Bob Schieffer pushed the same point on
March 8, the day the House of Representatives passed the across-the-board
income tax cut.

"For a single parent with one child earning $22,000 a year, that
translates into a savings of $932 once the full cut is phased in,"
Schieffer lectured as the numbers flashed on screen. "A two-earner
couple with two children earning $55,000 will realize a $1,900 a year tax
cut. The same size family earning $90,000 would see a cut of more than
$2,700. And if that family’s earnings rose to $400,000, their tax cut
would total more than $13,000 yearly."

As the information relayed by ABC’s Moran and NBC’s Gregory makes
clear, those dollar figures stressed by CBS are practically meaningless if
you don’t know how much an individual is already paying the federal
government in income taxes. A basic outline of the tax burden that current
law places on various income groups is undoubtedly relevant to any
discussion of the "fairness" of any changes in income tax rates,
yet it was nowhere to be found on the CBS Evening News.

Nor was any mention made of the income tax increase which the Clinton
administration pushed through a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1993 as
part of a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate large annual budget
deficits. The Clinton tax increase, sold as part of a program of
"shared sacrifice," only increased income tax rates on
upper-income households, raising the top rate from 31 percent to 36
percent, and then creating a "millionaires surcharge" of ten
percent — a de facto top bracket of 39.6 percent for those with the
largest annual earnings that has been in place ever since. Despite the
fact that those deficits have disappeared, even the Bush tax cut would
only return the top rate to 33 percent, two points higher than it was when
Bill Clinton took office.

This context, however, was never included in a single network story,
even as many of the liberal Democrats who voted for the 1993 tax increase
condemned as "unfair" and "a giveaway" even a partial
rollback of those higher rates. The fact that the CBS Evening News
dutifully reported the liberals’ complaints about the tax cut’s
"unfairness," yet completely excluded facts and data which might
offer a convincing rebuttal, ensured that viewers would hear only one side
of the debate.

The CBS Evening News
Promoted the Idea that Tax Cuts Are Dangerous

A key argument of tax cut supporters
is that a significant reduction in the federal tax burden would benefit
the economy. During the presidential campaign, Bush advocated cutting tax
rates to ensure long-term growth; during the transition and in his first
ten weeks in office, Bush additionally argued that enacting tax cuts this
year would help speed the economy’s recovery from its current slowdown.
"I strongly believe that a tax relief plan is an important part of
helping our country’s economy recover," the President was shown
stating on NBC on February 5.

This argument on behalf of the tax cut was reported on all three
network broadcasts. On NBC, this pro-tax cut argument actually dominated
the debate, while on ABC it was relatively balanced with the liberal
counter-arguments that the Bush tax cut would either offer no assistance
to the economy, or do more harm than good. For example, on March 15, ABC
showed the comments of House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt:
"This tax cut does not stimulate the economy; in fact, I would argue
to you it’s having an opposite effect."

But
on the CBS Evening News, the argument that tax cuts were beneficial
was treated minimally, while the liberal talking point that tax cuts were
dangerous was featured far more than on either ABC or NBC. (See Exhibit 6,
"Would the Tax Cut Help?") On February 5, for example,
correspondent John Roberts gave airtime to an unlabeled liberal activist
who cited Ronald Reagan as proof that too much tax cutting was a terrible
thing: "Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice can’t forget the
last time Congress went on a tax cut spree in 1981; America is still
paying the bill," Roberts lectured, once again failing to mention
McIntyre’s liberal credentials.

A few moments later on the same night, CBS’s Bob Schieffer
paraphrased Democratic "fear that anything larger [than the $800
billion cut proposed by Daschle and Gephardt] could set off the kind of
red ink spending that produced the enormous deficits of the 1980s."
Schieffer’s report, billed by anchor Rather as a "Real Deal"
analysis "beyond the photo-ops and spins," was strictly limited
to presenting the Democratic arguments against Bush’s tax cut.

On February 8, Rather introduced a story by countering the conservative
point that lowering tax rates would help the economy. Citing unnamed
experts, he paraphrased their view of Bush’s tax cut: "Some
economists worry that it’s a long term risk." The story that
followed, by John Roberts, failed to follow through by showing an actual
economist — or anyone else — making that point.

On February 10, a story by Wyatt Andrews strained to fault the Bush
administration for encouraging Congress to make the tax cuts retroactive,
but not actually sending the legislative language to the Hill. "The
jump start, part of the sales pitch, is not yet part of the plan," he
alerted viewers. The not-so-subtle point, in the words of weekend anchor
Thalia Assuras, was that "the cuts would not be of any immediate
help."

On February 19, CBS decided that it was national news that a New York
City priest, Father Bill Greenlaw, thought that Bush’s idea to eliminate
the estate tax would harm charities. "This is crazy, in my judgment,
to think about eliminating that so that the most wealthy of our society
can become still more wealthy," Father Greenlaw told CBS’s Jim
Axelrod.

On February 27, Rather opened the Evening News by saying the
President would, in his address to Congress that evening, make "a TV
pitch for a tax cut gamble." The next night, Rather again cited
economists whom he wouldn’t name and who didn’t appear in the
follow-up story, proclaiming that "Democrats and some independent
economists believe the Bush push is risky business."

Neither ABC nor NBC ever went so far as to label the President’s
program a "gamble," and neither of the other broadcasts ever
cited the worries of unnamed experts as a way of validating the claims of
liberal tax cut opponents. In its presentation of the debate over whether
Bush’s tax cut would help or harm the U.S. economy, the CBS Evening
News displayed news judgment that placed it to the left of even its
two broadcast evening brethren.

Conclusion: Liberal Spin on All
Three Networks, but CBS Was the Worst

In its coverage during the first ten weeks of the Bush administration,
the CBS Evening News displayed a unique antagonism toward the tax
cut and the arguments made on its behalf, while obliging its liberal
critics by frequently reciting their arguments against the tax cut.
Neither ABC nor NBC could ever be confused with promoters of the tax cut,
to be sure, but both World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly News
offered viewers an occasional glimpse of conservatives’ perspective on
these key points.

ABC, for example, was more restrained than either of its competitors
when it came to the debate over the size of the Bush tax cut. As on CBS
and NBC, it skewed its stories to give more airtime to liberal critics who
complained that the tax cut was "big" or "huge" (by a
margin of 15-3), but its own on-air personalities generally did not repeat
such partisan rhetoric themselves. On occasion, ABC anchor Peter Jennings
referred to it as a "broad-based tax cut" or an
"across-the-board" tax cut, but he avoided the blunt language
used by CBS’s Rather and NBC’s Brokaw which left no doubt of their
personal view of Bush’s tax proposal.

More than its competitors, NBC juxtaposed the complaints of liberal
critics that the Bush tax cut was unfairly tilted toward the wealthy with
a glimpse of data showing the other side of the story. In three stories,
NBC reported that lower- and middle-income families receive a larger
percentage tax cut than the rich. That’s not the whole story, of course,
but it’s a necessary fact to include in any debate over the perceived
fairness of the Bush tax cut. Those three stories couldn’t overshadow
the 14 instances in which liberal politicians were able to claim on Nightly
News that the Bush cut was unfair, but those three stories made NBC
more balanced than CBS, which failed to ever report this basic fact.

If a single anecdote can illustrate hostility toward the tax cut, then
consider: On February 27, President Bush outlined his tax and budget plans
before a joint session of the U.S. Congress. That night, CBS News paid for
a professional poll to be conducted after the speech. A
scientifically-drawn random sample of 978 Americans who watched the speech
were surveyed, and the results were properly reported on CBS’s
Web site and its morning news program, The Early Show.

But the scientific survey found that most of those who watched liked
Bush’s programs in general, and two-thirds (67%) said they liked his tax
cut in particular. Instead of telling viewers this positive fact about the
tax cut, the CBS Evening News buried the poll. Reporter John
Roberts chose to interview two women in a coffee house in Omaha, Nebraska,
one of whom thought the tax cut should be reduced and another who opposed
it outright.

Here’s a transcript of the relevant portion of that report:

Roberts: "At the Stage Right Café in Omaha, where the sarcasm
runs as strong as the coffee, they’ve heard all the talk about tax
cuts."Jan Dill [coffee house patron]: "Some people think it’s too
small. Some people think it’s too big. And some people think it’s
just right. Isn’t that what it was?"Roberts: "What do you think?"Dill: "I think it could probably be reduced."Roberts: "Jan Dill believes if Mr. Bush can hold the line on
spending, his tax cut could work. But Sue Kilgarin fears the President
is rolling the dice on eight years of success just for political
gain."
Kilgarin [second patron]: "I think a big tax cut is just a
real feather in someone’s cap."

Roberts’ report might have been excusable if CBS had not been
sitting on a poll showing that, in stark contrast to his informal survey
at the coffee shop, most of the public (including 48% of the Democrats
surveyed in CBS’s scientific poll) favored the tax cut.

After suppressing a poll showing support for Bush’s larger tax cut,
the next night Roberts told viewers about a survey that an unnamed
competitor to CBS News had conducted. After running a quick clip of
Republican Congressman Tom DeLay criticizing a Democratic tax bill as
"nothing more than a redistribution of wealth," Roberts
immediately undercut him: "New polls, however, show voters leaning
slightly in favor of the Democratic plan."

It is not clear what "new polls" Roberts was citing, but a
likely source was a Reuters-Zogby poll released on that day which did
report that 40 percent of those surveyed supported the Democrats’
proposed $800 billion tax cut, compared with 38 percent who backed
Bush’s cut. If it was the Reuters-Zogby poll, then it’s worth
pointing out that eight percent of the public rejected both cuts,
preferring an even greater tax cut.

It is remarkable that after weeks of hearing that the tax cut is too
big, too unfair, and perhaps a danger to the nation, a large segment of
the population remains supportive of President Bush’s tax cut plan,
and a great number of citizens want even greater tax reduction. But
there is still no escaping the basic fact that the networks in general,
and the CBS Evening News in particular, have failed to offer
their audiences anything close to a balanced and fair debate on the key
issues involved in the tax cut debate of 2001.